Facebook has fixed a bug in its apps that was draining users' phone batteries extremely fast

Mark Zuckerberg.
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Facebook has fixed a nasty bug in its Messenger app that was draining some users' batteries incredibly fast and making their phones get too hot.

David Marcus, the VP of messaging products at the social network, confirmed on Twitter that there was a bug, and that it should now be solved.

"Issue was isolated and fixed server side," he wrote on Tuesday. "If you restart Messenger the problem should be gone now. Very sorry."

It's not clear how many users were affected by the problem, but it appears to have only been an issue on Android smartphones.

Plenty of people complained about the bug online. "Shoutout to facebook/messenger apps for destroying 90% of my phone battery in three hours when i wasn't even using them," one Twitter user wrote on Tuesday.

"Facebook messenger used 15% of my battery today. I haven't opened it at all this week," said another.

(I'm pretty sure I also experienced this bug. My Moto G handset repeatedly got very hot and drained extremely quickly over the last week, though I didn't check to see which app was causing it.)

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider: "We were made aware that for a very short period of time a bug caused Messenger to impact battery life. This has been addressed and resolved, we apologize for any inconvenience."

In short: If you're experiencing rapid battery drain on your Android, Facebook Messenger is probably the problem. Restart the app, and the issue should be fixed. (But let us know if it isn't!)